CAS PS 222 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Banana Bread, Olfactory Receptor, Taste Receptor
12 Nov 2018
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Gustation: what is a tastant (physical stimulus), detection and discrimination among different tastants, anatomical and neural basis of taste perception. The world would be different if we did not have a sense of smell and/ or taste. In our environment, molecules are continually released from objects and living things and mix with air around us. Everything in this room is giving off molecules, odorants. People, food items, plants, and non-living things give off molecules that are mixing with the air. New car smell is the plastics outgassing chemical molecules into the nose (do not breath too deeply when in a new car). Molecules that can be detected by a human observer are called odorants. Odorants: molecules that produce a response in olfactory receptors (responsible for detecting smell). We do not smell the individual ingredients of the banana bread, we smell it overall (this is complex).
